This was me today.
It was hot and humid and I just wasn’t hydrated or hydrating correctly. You’d think after all these years and all these miles that I’d know better.
The course was a rail to trail out and back — 13.1 miles up, and 13.1 miles back down… and mostly flat as a pancake. It’s a famed course for setting PRs and getting BQs… and today I achieved neither, not even close.
The humidity is what did me in. I haven’t been training in Florida so it really took a toll on me. I knew I was underhydrated at the start but within a mile or two I was already sweating bullets. I managed a respectable first half but then the shakes started. I couldn’t go in a straight line, stumbling about as if one mad with wine… only not having the joy of having Bacchus as my co-pilot. My limbs were a tinglin’ and in a parallel universe I’d probably have radioactive blood and could spin a web to catch thieves just like flies. But in this world, I was overheated and struggling.
I wasn’t hurt, not in the way I was in March marathons. I was disoriented and, well, unmotivated. I had no get-up-and-go, no stamina, no sense of rhythm or cadence. The latter is hardly surprising. I’ve never had rhythm though inexplicably I was in marching band as a bass drum player. Mistakes of youth.
In any case, there was A LOT of walking in the closing 10 miles especially. I felt underwater, though that may have just been the beads of sweat collecting and the Dixie Cups of water I kept pouring over my head. But I was not doing well. I saw various goals for the day ebb and flow, lost to the currents of time and discombobulating waves of dehydrated nausea. It was not an easy day.
In the end, I rallied to a 4:04:55.58, 136th out of 600 overall participants.
On the plus side, my sciatica isn’t bothering me so much. I seem to recall a Jack London story where a guy falls into a freezing river and he bites his tongue to stop the pain of his limbs because the brain can only process only so much pain at one time. That may be another delusional memory though, a Mandela Effect in effect.
Anyhoo, as I am wont to do — some photos from the trail:
